


The Name of the Snake

by rfsmiley



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Angst, First Time, Idiots in Love, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), M/M, Possibly Even Whump, also themetically borrows from The Name of the Wind, but is mostly meant to be informed by show canon, changing tags slightly as this flirts with a scene from book canon, listen if Lin Manuel Miranda can do it I can too, slightly canon non-compliant, with sincere apologies to Patrick Rothfuss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-01-21
Packaged: 2021-02-27 11:34:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,125
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22166458
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rfsmiley/pseuds/rfsmiley
Summary: True names have power. It’s a pity that Aziraphale no longer knows his.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 457
Kudos: 1148
Collections: AJ’s personal faves, Best Aziraphale and Crowley, Ixnael’s Recommendations, Our Own Side, kashiichan's favourites





	1. Garnet

**Author's Note:**

> Happy happy 2020 my dears! 
> 
> I really have no excuse for this fic. you know how sometimes you have an idea, and you’re like oh my god I hope no one ever writes this because I would be furious about it, and then two days later you start writing it? That happened to me with The Ark, and now again with this one... whoops
> 
> Housekeeping: This fic is written in its entirety but needing a touch more editing I think. Consequently, I'm trying something new. It's a three-parter and UPDATES will happen on TUESDAYS so if WIPs vex you check back in two weeks when it's complete. or hey, stick with it along the way! 
> 
> I will cherish every comment as a slightly-early birthday present if you are so inclined ;) I love them all.
> 
> All the laurels and love to Drawlight who is such a dearly appreciated beta and, more importantly, a light in this fandom.

_"What do you mean by blue? Describe it."_

_I struggled for a moment, failed. "So blue is a name?"_

_"It is a word. Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men… But a word is nothing but a painting of a fire. A name is the fire itself."_

_My head was swimming by this point. "I still don't understand."_

_He laid a hand on my shoulder. "Using words to talk of words is like using a pencil to draw a picture of itself, on itself. Impossible. Confusing. Frustrating." He lifted his hands high above his head as if stretching for the sky. "But there are other ways to understanding!" he shouted, laughing like a child. He threw both arms to the cloudless arch of sky above us, still laughing. "Look!" he shouted, tilting his head back. "Blue! Blue! Blue!”_

― _Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind_

*

It is teatime, sometime in the mid-1800s, on a perfectly ordinary Wednesday, when Aziraphale realizes that he does not know his name.

Not the obvious one, not _Aziraphale_ , of course not that. He is not likely to lose four syllables, signifying little except for the obvious Hebrew and Islamic roots, largely dull as an old coin. That flat signage is static, a badge he has worn for thousands of years. No. What eludes his grasp is his true name, the one that takes almost a full minute to pronounce, in a tongue that mortals may not speak.

He knew what it _was,_ of course. He still knows how to say it, the long phrases in a sacred tongue - but as he pronounces it over his kettle, frowning, teaspoon in hand, he knows that it no longer fits him.

Which means that it must have changed.

Names can be like that. They are often fickle, especially in the language of angels, which tells of things as they are, and most of the time, what they are is ephemeral. It stands to reason, then, that to speak of them truly requires a dynamic, shifting, changing description.

But it is still very strange. _Angels’_ names are not ephemeral. Angels are carved out of metaphysical limestone. He has not heard of one changing before.

It is baffling.

It is also incredibly frustrating.

By now the tea is forgotten. Aziraphale finds himself wandering down into his glorious new bookshop, pacing through the shelves as if the human texts might hold answers. He repeats the name, twice more, hoping that it might suddenly ring true. Twice more, it fails to kindle.

At last, he tries to draw it. Taking the chalk out of his desk drawer, he furtively rolls back the rug, leaving a space to sketch the insignia. Here is the slash that means _sword,_ the arc that mean _s angel_ , the sharp corner that means _guardian._ Here is the piece that he recognizes in himself and hates, the little curl that says _hungry_ , _hedonist, desire,_ that is the root of so many tiny woes: his love of opulence, his passion for more books, his craving for good wine and decadent food.

But when he finishes writing it all out, he can see that it’s not quite right. It _looks_ like him; it should be correct. But no lines of fire ignite the chalk, and when he says it aloud, again, testing it, he doesn’t feel the answering reverberation inside him, like the tolling of a bell.

Aziraphale frowns. He says it once more, a fifth time, enunciating the holy syllables that should add up to his own self.

But it doesn’t work. His atoms don’t thrill to it. He is a stodgy bookseller in a shop, and if he contains multitudes, they are folded up as demurely as pages might be into a leather spine.

He exhales. It doesn’t matter that much, really, he tells himself. Angels stopped using their true names long ago, when it became clear that there was a new opposing force in the universe. Unlike human words, which have only ever been shadows, a true name has power, and therefore may be exploited (and Aziraphale remembers, with a pang, the afternoon that he had met a snake in a garden and asked its name, and it had looked panicked and said _Crawly._ That was the moment that he had begun to understand that things had well and truly changed).

It’s a shame, really, because the old way was better. An introduction, then, was a revealing of one’s self, a total parting of the curtain to show the entity entire.

It makes Aziraphale sad, to know that he is now veiled even to himself.

*

It’s not the sort of thing you can talk about, either, which makes it worse. Aziraphale tries to imagine going to another angel and describing the problem, and fails. They would turn their blank and brilliant eyes on him and whisper to each other. _If the name of the Guardian of the Eastern Gate has changed, does that mean he has Fallen?_ (He has not. His Grace still courses through him like breath, thank goodness.)

No. He doesn’t think he will ever tell them. It might come out many, many years from now, when the trumpets call and the Host is summoned by name to assemble, but, well, he can’t worry about that yet. There will be enough going on that it won’t matter, at that point. Probably. Definitely.

For the time being, the only person he would even dream of discussing this with is Crowley – Crowley, who changes and tweaks and trims his human name the way that some people cultivate bonsai. Aziraphale wonders, frequently, what underlying desire or fear goads him into making the little changes, but doesn’t dare ask. It seems very personal; surely if he wanted to address it, he would. Aziraphale isn’t going to press the matter.

He thinks, now, that perhaps he could confess this to him: the fact that his true name has metamorphosed and, apparently, flown away. He doesn’t think Crowley would laugh at him. In fact, he thinks that if anyone would understand, it would be him.

But this is something they have never talked about.

Everything else – or nearly everything else – has been fair game. They have lent their tongues to things as radical as theological questions, the human penchant for depravity, and their own strategies to further the Arrangement. Intimate topics, those, including an evening when Crowley had explained at length how to carry out a seduction for him and Aziraphale, bright red, had asked several delicate questions about female anatomy. The answering grin had shown nearly all of Crowley’s teeth, and he had answered, and they had found a pad of paper, and sketches had happened, and when Aziraphale had looked up at him, he had found those yellow eyes lingering on his mouth -

So, then. This is the truth of it. There are only three topics that they both shy away from, which are: true names (until now, anyway); the reason for Crowley’s Fall (fine, good, he doesn’t want to know); and the name for this, whatever this thing is, that has grown up between them like ivy.

Perhaps the strength of his feelings in that regard should not be surprising, the angel reflects. After all, this is the demon credited with the original temptation. Small wonder, then, that he is himself rather tempting.

He has never turned the full force of his powers on Aziraphale, for which the angel is very grateful. They have always worked together as colleagues, or friendly acquaintances, and nothing more, which means that, over the millennia, Aziraphale has been able to hold himself back from all manner of sins. When Crowley’s hair was long and garnet-bright and needing a good brushing, Aziraphale never so much as touched it. When he appeared in garters that showed off his trim legs at the Globe, Aziraphale allowed himself a glance and nothing more.

It’s quite the accomplishment, actually. His pretended indifference has gone on for nearly six thousand years now. In the Roman baths, over oysters in the shell, in a tent during the Crusades – hundreds of times over, they have lounged side by side, with Crowley passing him towels or tiny forks or wine, and ignoring the tiny catch of Aziraphale’s breath at his touch.

He would like to be proud of this resistance, as a display of peerless mental fortitude, perhaps, but he knows that congratulating himself would be no better than lying. If Crowley wanted to ensnare him – _really_ wanted to, and really tried – he doesn’t think he would be able to withstand it.

There is something slightly terrifying about that. Or, well, more than slightly. The demon has some strange power over him, almost as much as he would have if he knew Aziraphale’s true name.

The notion is sobering. Aziraphale, considering it, pauses for a moment. For an insane moment, in this fresh embarrassment of having lost it, he wonders if Crowley _does_ know his name after all, and could teach it to him.

But of course, that is a silly thought. They don’t know each other, not like that. The risk of torment and destruction, at the hands of someone from a technically opposing side, is too high. The snake of Eden had called himself _Crawly,_ and the angel in white had called himself _Aziraphale,_ and that is how they have gone on together, through the long years.

He does wish he knew Crowley’s true name. It’s idle curiosity, but, of course, it is equally impossible.

Maybe they could talk about it, though. At least. At last.

Aziraphale is still nerving himself up to the idea when, to his surprise, in the months that follow, Crowley airs the forbidden topic first.

*

The year is 1862. They are meeting in St. James’ Park – itself such a hilarious moniker, Aziraphale thinks, for a place that should be spoken of with a tongue that could laud it properly: _place of meetings, light on the water, lungs of a city_. “St. James.” Honestly, whatever would the humans think of next?

His thoughts are interrupted by Crowley saying, “I need a favor,” and handing him a paper inked with a very specific request.

Aziraphale reads it twice. He stands there, feeling the balm of the sunlight, listening to the ducks, holding a scrap of paper that asks him for death. The combination is so incongruous that he feels like he might be sick.

“Out of the question,” he says at last.

Crowley doesn’t look at him. “Why not?”

“It would destroy you.” How could anyone request this? “I’m not bringing you a suicide pill.”

“That’s not -” the demon snaps, and then all the fire sighs out of him; Aziraphale sees it extinguish. “I want insurance,” he says, very softly.

“For what?”

“For if – if it all goes pear-shaped.”

The angel looks at him intently. He is holding himself very still, staring out at the water. On this brilliant morning, he has dressed himself almost defiantly in dark colors, as if to clash with the warm summer hues of the world on purpose, but he is not completely successful: the light anoints his red hair, his red sideburns, his red lips, and softens him.

 _You would be warm, in my arms,_ Aziraphale thinks, and the thinking of it is like a betrayal.

“No,” he says. “Absolutely not.”

Crowley is quiet for a minute, and then he says, “ _Aziraphale._ ” The use of his English name instead of “angel” is unusual in and of itself, but his companion notes that he deliberately over-pronounces it, with excessive care to each syllable. “ ‘S a nice name, that. Good choice, for everyday wear. I never told you.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale begins, feeling suddenly afraid.

“Funny though,” Crowley says. “I’ve known you for six thousand years, and I don’t know your true name.” For the first time, he turns his head. “Isn’t that odd? Shouldn’t I know it, after all this time?”

They look at each other. Aziraphale’s nausea is stronger than ever. How painfully stupid of him, to think they could ever discuss this. He cannot find the correct thing to say. He doesn’t know how to admit to this demon that he couldn’t answer truthfully even if he wanted to.

“Wise of you,” Crowley says, looking away again. “You probably don’t even know the kinds of things that can be done, if someone has that kind of power over you. Do you?” He doesn’t wait for a reply. “Believe me when I say that Hell knows.”

The angel's mouth is very dry. “What kinds of -”

“You can’t run away from them, if they can call you, you know,” says Crowley. He sounds distant now. “You can be summoned, you can be bound. Or they can make you do things; that’s another fun one.”

“Do they call _you_?” Aziraphale whispers. Has he just never guessed that, in the years between meetings, Crowley has been suffering?

“What?” says Crowley sharply. “No, of course not. No one can,” he adds with a flash of pride, as his companion breathes a quiet sigh of relief. “My name changed, so. There’s not a soul that knows it now. But if anyone ever finds it out...”

He doesn’t finish the sentence. The implications are there, of course, but Aziraphale won’t think of them until later, much later. Currently, he is too distracted.

“It _changed_ ,” he repeats. He is amazed, and yet it makes sense: of course Crowley’s soul is as dynamic as his own. “Oh, Crowley, but – how did you know what it became?”

Crowley is still looking at the water. “I just knew,” he says, and his voice is quiet, now. He seems to be remembering something. “I think I knew the second it happened.”

This is not helpful at all.

*

Crowley’s voice sounds wrong, when he calls, late one evening near the turn of the millennia. “We need to talk,” he says, and Aziraphale frowns. The voice on the line is tight and angry, and he wonders – he wonders if -

His original guess is wrong. It’s cataclysmic, yes, but on a universal scale, and not a personal one. Armageddon has been set into motion.

They meet in the park, the same park in which they had met a hundred and fifty years previous, just after Aziraphale lost his name. Crowley is languid beside him on the bench, the tension in his voice gone without trace. He talks casually of Glyndbourne, and gravlax, and Aziraphale matches his tone. As if the end of the world was nothing more than something you might read about in the papers, and then you could simply fold them up and put them away, and get on with your day.

“I have an idea,” Crowley says, as they climb the stairs to his Bentley. “We can do something.”

“No,” says Aziraphale immediately.

He’s not interested, not in this. This isn’t the Arrangement, but something more sordid. This is going against the Great Plan itself.

Crowley isn’t willing to hear the word _No,_ though. He is determined, and, for the first time that Aziraphale can remember, he is exerting more than a little infernal power to at least get the angel to listen to him. Aziraphale finds himself agreeing to lunch – lunch sounds, suddenly, like an absolutely delightful idea – and then to drinking, and before he knows quite what is happening he is opening a fourth bottle of his reserve of Chateauneuf du Pape.

They are a mess, by then. They are weaving in and out of English and their old, true language, to describe dolphins and the ancient Kraken and Stephen Sondheim, _the man who sets loneliness to music._ It’s all well and good until Crowley also speaks the true name of _eternity_ , lighting up the entire bookshop, and sending sudden fear through Aziraphale like an arrow. They are being horribly cavalier, saying these things. They don’t know who may be listening.

He sobers up. Crowley follows suit, but it solves nothing. The demon comes crowding into his personal space with renewed determination. They can raise the Antichrist to be neutral, he says. They can be godfathers. As if this is enough to entice him.

“Godfathers,” Aziraphale says, looking up into those yellow eyes. He feels horribly weak, almost pinned by them. His protest is feeble, but no less true: “Crowley, no. I’ll – I’ll be damned.”

it’s not flippant. It’s literal. If he works to sabotage the Divine Plan, he will definitely Fall.

“I don’t think so,” Crowley says urgently. “Not if you’re just thwarting me. That could be part of the Divine Plan, too, couldn’t it? You see a wile, you thwart. Am I right?”

“How do I know this isn’t just part of Hell’s plan?” Aziraphale demands. “They recruited you to deliver the baby, didn’t they?”

Crowley leans back. Complicated emotions flicker over his face. He likely doesn’t remember that he isn’t wearing sunglasses. “That’s the only piece I swore to,” Crowley says. “Getting him in place. Setting things in motion. As far as I’m concerned, this is a loophole in the contract.”

“The _contract,_ ” Aziraphale says with sudden horror, and Crowley is silent, unwilling to elaborate, visibly aware that the admission was a mistake.

But the angel can’t let this go. “You signed your true name.”

The yellow eyes dart away from his. “Yes,” Crowley says at last. “I did.”

And Aziraphale sees, as plain as day, that the demon had had no choice in the matter.

He wants so badly to ask about it. Crowley had been so terrified of this happening, two hundred years ago, and now it has. It must be agony, to know that his name is in the palm of the hand of Hell.

Pity strangles him, clouding his judgment. He isn’t sure what to do. He cannot solve this problem on his own; he has nothing to offer but his condolences.

But – that’s not quite true, is it? He can help to foil Armageddon. He can grant the demon’s one request.

“Please,” Crowley says softly, and that is all it takes.

Aziraphale makes the vow in their own language.

_I will help you, if it is in my power._

When the demon is gone, he stands and smooths his waistcoat with shaking hands, trying to justify the impulsive decision to himself. The windows of the bookshop quiver, with a noise of rattling glass, when he can’t, and gives up, and says a name that he hasn’t said in many, many years: _omniscient, omnipotent, almighty, benevolent God._

It is like a prayer and a question together. He wants to ask if this is what She intends. If working to rear the Antichrist is something he can be damned for, after all.

He knows he has called Her correctly; his soul lights like a torch, hearing Her true name said. But though She must hear him, She is silent.


	2. Cherry

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A humble thank you to everyone for your excitement/nice words, you've made this so fun and I love all of you an absolutely unbelievable amount.

It seems like a good plan, for a little while. An unsuspecting Dowling estate hires a severe nanny and a jovial gardener, and pays a monthly fee into a pair of sham bank accounts (Crowley gives his to American televangelists, while Aziraphale, as carefully correct in this as in everything, makes donations to charity), and they get to work.

It’s almost too easy. Warlock listens to each of them with wide unblinking eyes, soaking in everything they tell him. He can recite both the Lord’s Prayer and a list of northern hemisphere dictators. His two teddy bears are named Genghis and Gandhi, because he thought that the titles sounded like brothers. (Their true names, of course, are very different, but there is no explaining that to a five-year-old.) In time, his truly spectacular tantrums are curbed by either Nanny’s yellow glare, or Brother Francis teaching him to honor his elders; they’re not sure which of them deserves credit or if he’s just growing out of it, but they both count it as a success.

And, well. If all of this means that they’re spending more time together, chasing endlessly after a child, plotting extravagant contingency plans on the worst days, drinking and giggling in the larder when the house is asleep on the best ones – perhaps that’s all right. Perhaps they’re where they’re supposed to be.

Perhaps it’s ineffable.

Aziraphale lets himself believe this. He lets himself be tempted to indulge in too much of the Dowlings’ whiskey, lets himself glow a little at the hungry look in her shining eyes. He even lets her thigh insinuate itself between his, as Crowley reaches over him for a second bottle of Glenmorangie. (The first time this happens, a truly uncharacteristic thought occurs to him: like this, in this form, she is so insubstantial that he suspects she might be wearing a girdle. The second time, his nose brushes against her blouse as it billows forward, and he revises his guess. He thinks she might be wearing nothing at all.)

Of course, he wants her. Of course he does. It’s worse now than it has ever been, although he can’t understand why. His mind is wallpapered with the details of her: the stripe of a seam up the back of a calf, the hot scent of orchids at her throat and wrists, the day she wears a double hoop of pearls and they dip under the collar of her shirt, warm no doubt against her stark breastbone.

It’s just – well, he can’t _do_ anything about it. Angels can choose to be sexed, of course, and Aziraphale has dabbled with such experiments before, but the primary issue in the case at hand is the vehemence of his own feelings for this infernal being, already perilously close to worship. He is certain that to allow an angel that has Fallen to tempt him like that would tip Aziraphale into his wake.

Nevertheless, the possibility lingers. He breathes it in, on their nights of indulgence. He looks at the lipstick on the rim of her glass, watches her deft fingers on the bottle, nails dark as merlot.

“It suits you,” he says to her, at last, drunkenly.

“What does?” says Crowley, topping off her glass.

“The form, the outfit,” Aziraphale slurs. He cups his hands in front of his chest – a ridiculous gesture, since Crowley is flat as a board, and as slender too. She would have done well as an American flapper instead of an English nanny. “I mean, they all do, you know. But this is nice.” He fumbles. “You – your taste in clothes has always been. Erm. Nice.”

“I was going to say,” says Crowley, tossing her curls, “that you were wounding my vanity, if it took you this long to notice how good my legs look in stockings.”

“Well, how long have there been stockings?” Aziraphale says, though he knows the answer: memories of the Globe Theater are rising in him as hotly as a blush.

“What, that long?” says Crowley, preening, but there is an unusual glitter in her yellow eyes as she refills Aziraphale’s glass, and the angel can’t help but laugh when, while meeting his gaze, she accidentally pours up to the brim and then over it.

In the morning, he stinks of Scotch and her orchid perfume, and Harriet looks between him and her tightly zipped nanny with confusion and dawning suspicion, which sets them off giggling again.

The whole thing is marvelously fun. They are merry, careless, sly, as if the world itself isn’t at stake. It’s intoxicating, to be plotting like this. It feels deliciously close to sinful.

And then it’s the holidays, and they are gifted with a whole week off.

It’s a practicality, rather than a favor. Apparently, at Christmas, the Dowlings’ relatives flood into every taxpayer-footed nook and cranny, and every room is needed for hosting purposes. It’s a lovely show of familial warmth and holiday spirit, says Aziraphale, removing his sideburns, and Nanny purses her prim cherry lips and says it’s a fucking scam.

Something about the way her mouth looks, as it utters this pronouncement, melts the last of Aziraphale’s resolve. Red, he thinks, looking at it. Red was always Crowley’s color.

“Come back to the bookshop with me,” he says. He can’t seem to tear his eyes away from that vibrant crimson. “It’s Christmas Eve, you know.”

Crowley only looks at him. It’s almost a question, but she says nothing, and in the end it isn’t a no.

*

Amid the building drifts of a fresh December snow, they make their way back to Soho, although they do stop for wine and truffles from a shop in Covent Gardens that was quite surprised to discover it was not closing early after all. Crowley holds the twine-wrapped packages and bags as the angel unlocks the bookshop, and they step inside amid wild flurries. Once inside, Aziraphale turns to discover that his companion, rash as usual, has already opened a bottle, and is finding a way to drink it without dropping anything, because he is ridiculous sometimes. “Oh, here,” he says, fussily, lifting the moisture-speckled burdens from Crowley’s arms. He yanks the open bottle away, too, for good measure. “You really have no patience, do you?”

He makes the mistake of glancing up. Crowley, freshly male, is impassive behind his sunglasses. And then he snorts.

“Pa – Aziraphale, I have more patience than anyone in the world,” he says, and then he moves forward, and cups the angel’s face in his hands, and drinks from him, as though from a chalice, or possibly the Grail itself.

It is so unexpected that for a moment Aziraphale can do nothing but catalogue. Here is the dark tannic flavor of their expensive wine; here, beneath it, is an ashy note, like cinders. And then: here is the honey note of a soft, involuntary sigh of wanting – his own, he realizes with shock – that sweetens the mouths that it passes through.

Crowley makes a noise like weeping, and deepens the kiss.

The sudden awareness of the name for what they are doing, the admission of it, is all that it takes. _I’m kissing him,_ Aziraphale thinks dizzily, _he’s kissing me,_ and suddenly everything crumbles away. In his human corporation, all five senses capitulate at once, and he experiences their folding as if six thousand years have passed in one heartbeat: the sensation of the first rainfall on his wings and skin, the shine of those sly yellow eyes, the feeling of a thermos in his hands, the scent of orchids. The taste of him, only him.

Then, inevitable: the drop of his stomach, the ice down his spine, the fear.

He drops the packages and shoves the demon back. Crowley is not expecting it, and he staggers. His mouth is wet and slack, and he looks up into Aziraphale’s eyes with a lack of focus that would be gratifying if the angel wasn’t suddenly so afraid of him.

In his own ears, his voice sounds ludicrously high. “I don’t see how we can keep working together if you’re going to keep _tempting_ me!”

“Tempting you,” Crowley repeats, numbly. His eyes widen a little; the mist in them dispels. “Tem – Is that what you think this is?”

“What else could it be?” Aziraphale says, or begins to say, rather, before he steps back, and puts a hand over his mouth.

He suddenly understands what is happening.

Crowley set his true seal on orders from Hell. He gave up his true name to pledge his allegiance to that task. The delivery of the Antichrist, the launch of Armageddon – these are events that, now, having sworn to, he can never set aside. Why would Hell leave open the loophole of sabotaging them?

And, even if Hell had made such an idiotic mistake, it wouldn’t matter. Now it has the intransigent power of the knowledge of Crowley’s name. The price of attempted sabotage would be torture, or worse. If summoned by one who knew how to call him, he would not be able to escape.

How could Aziraphale be so stupid as to believe he would try to foil the plan anyway? Did it not make more sense for the corruption of an angel to be another, ancillary task?

 _Or they can make you do things; that’s another fun one._ Crowley told him so himself, a hundred and fifty years ago. He has gone on trusting him, heedless of the warning, and he is paying for it.

He has been so stupid.

He can imagine it, so clearly. He can almost hear the sneering voice of a stranger, gleeful over the prospect of securing a Principality at last. _Use anything you can against him. If he's grown fond of Earth's pleasures, use_ _those. If he's fond of you, seduce him. But have him we must._

And Crowley, confronted with the signature line, not daring to resist...

“Oh my God,” says Aziraphale, stricken, and he sinks onto the sofa. “They’re using you to get at me, aren’t they?”

Crowley’s breathing is labored, as he stares at Aziraphale. His throat works visibly. At last he says, “You think – you think this is because -”

“Of course it is,” the angel says heavily. “You’ve never tried before. I always wondered why.”

“ _Before_ ,” Crowley says, strangling on it. “Before – what? Tried – what?”

“To seduce me,” Aziraphale says. “Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Crowley repeats. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with his hands. They flutter towards Aziraphale for a minute, like daring birds, and then clasp as if in prayer, and then the demon cages them in his armpits and crushes them.

“I’m not angry with you,” Aziraphale says, feeling dangerously close to hysteria. “You told me so yourself, that they have control over you, once they know your name.” He presses the heels of his own hands into his eyes. “I just didn’t listen to you.”

“ _Angel_ ,” the demon says helplessly.

Aziraphale can’t look at him.

“Please go,” he says.

Crowley goes.

*

He calls the Dowling residence, invents an ailing sister in Belfast, and regrets very much that he will need to cease his duties. On the other end of the phone, Harriet is silent for a long time and then says how sorry she is, and how sorry Nanny will be, too. This last is in a rather pointed tone, which Aziraphale resents, but he doesn’t know how to contradict her.

“Well,” he says. “Anyway. Thank you for the opportunity; you’ve been a marvelous employer.”

“Wait,” says Harriet, sounding shocked. “Wait. Is this your _notice?_ ”

“Yes, of course,” says Aziraphale, equally surprised.

“For God’s sake, Francis, you don’t have to quit. I can’t fire you for this,” Harriet says. “Britain has the equivalent of FMLA, doesn’t it?”

“Eff – what?”

“I’ll tell you what,” Harriet says. “There’s not much for you to do right now anyway. Why don’t I keep the post open for you until spring?”

“There’s no need for that,” Aziraphale says hastily.

“Francis, it’s Christmas Day,” Harriet says, sounding upset, and, bless it, it is; he didn’t even realize, before calling. “Go spend it with your loved ones and don’t worry about your job. All right?”

The phrase “loved ones” hurts him in some way he can’t articulate. Aziraphale makes a garbled excuse and hangs up the phone, shaking.

Well, he thinks. At least she won’t be surprised, when time passes and he doesn’t come back.

He expects that to be the last time he hears from Harriet Dowling, but Americans can’t leave well enough alone, and he is genuinely shocked when Crowley appears two days later with a massive, ridiculous Christmas bouquet, his arms overflowing with holly, pine boughs, and blood red roses.

“Just dropping it off,” the demon spits. “Don’t read into it. Harriet thought I’d know how to reach you to deliver it, and I promised that I would.” He drops it on the step of the bookshelf instead of into Aziraphale’s reflexively outstretched hands; the vase knows better than to shatter. “Condolences, by the way. Heard about your _sister_. Something painful and torturously slow, I have no doubt.”

Aziraphale looks at the shining scarlet berries, the discreet sympathy card tucked into a spray. His own lie seems so palpably obvious, when set in contrast to the vision he suddenly has of Nanny Ashtoreth, resentful but resigned, saying, _Yes, I’ll take the flowers to him, Harriet. Don’t worry about it. I’m sure he’s managing just fine._

Why bother with following through, though, when it so easily could have been another lie?

“Crowley,” he says, as the lithe black figure turns to depart.

The explanation comes to him just as the demon stiffens. Stupid, stupid, he tells himself. He has been fooled _again_. The flowers were just an opening, a way to start the clock on his infernal plot a second time.

He swallows. The black discs of Crowley’s sunglasses, impenetrable, have turned towards him; the angel wishes he could see his eyes.

“I don’t think you should come back here,” he says quietly, and Crowley flinches.

“Wh -”

“I really think it’s for the best,” Aziraphale goes on hastily. “You know I’m not going to -”

“Oh, certainly, of course it’s for the best,” Crowley cuts in smoothly. He seems to have recovered from his shock, but there’s something awful in the way that he’s talking, now. “I’ve got to have some time to recover, after you seeing right through me the way you did. I’ll have to give Hell a ring, let them know to rip up the contract. _You_ know, the one that says Hello Crowley, please start the end of the world for us, and you’ll also get a nice fat bonus if you can manage to fuck an angel.”

Aziraphale stares. It sounds grotesque in that familiar voice, as unexpected and piercing as the striking of a snake. Slowly, as if he really has been bitten, the poison of of that phrase seeps into his bloodstream: _fuck an angel, fuck an angel, fuck an angel_ , the venom moving through him with every heartbeat, leaving a searing inflammation in its wake.

He has never looked straight at the idea before, and now he is wholly confronted by it, and cannot escape.

It is a bit like looking into the sun.

The sunglasses are still inclined towards him. He honestly doesn’t know what to say. He thinks he should be angry, or possibly frightened, but the predominant sensation inside him is that hot, hungry, curling feeling, and sudden conviction that all of his clothes are too tight.

“Do you know what I think?” says Crowley, still in that horrible silky voice. The lipstick he wore as a nanny is long gone, but his lips are still very red, Aziraphale notices suddenly; almost as red as his hair, in this light. The taste of them flashes into his mind, and he finds himself lifting his chin, almost involuntarily, a lily opening toward the light.

Crowley steps back, and away from him.

“I think you don’t need to worry about it,” he says, and, turning sharply, he leaves Aziraphale standing alone, on the wet pavement, in the neighborhood that they have both learned to call _Soho_ in a borrowed language.

(The true name, of course, is much longer. It tells a storied history, and it ends with the word _haven._

It does not feel like a haven, now.)

Aziraphale could call him back. He could shout, _Crowley_ , and not trouble himself over the looks he would get. But he knows that Crowley would ignore it.

Again, he wishes that he knew the demon’s true name. That would give him real power. That would mean that he could _summon_ him, and make him stay, until they’ve figured this out.

But he doesn’t know it.

He has never known it, and he probably never will.


	3. Wine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I thought I'd have something witty to say by the end of this but I do not. Just this: thank you for coming along, and especially thank you for the birthday wishes and delightful comments!

Harriet calls him on March 15th. Beware the Ides of March, Aziraphale thinks vaguely. Not that he needs to. He’s already been knifed in the back. _Bear with me,_ he wants to say, to Harriet, to anyone who will listen. _My heart is in the coffin there with Caesar, and I must pause till it come back to me._

“Hello,” she says. “How is she?”

For a wild moment, Aziraphale thinks she means Nanny, and the female corporation that Crowley has presented to her. It takes him a minute to both remember the sister and summon his gardener’s accent, unused for three months. “Better, thank you,” he says. Then, abruptly, recalling that she might want him to come back to his post, “Er. I mean, worse.”

“Are you in Belfast now?” says Harriet. “No, you can’t be, can you? This is a London number.”

Too late, Aziraphale remembers that he had listed the bookshop number as his emergency contact for the Dowlings’ paperwork, which explains how she knew to dial it. “Ah,” he says. “No, not yet. Just frequent travel at the moment. I’ll be out there soon.”

“Permanently?”

Aziraphale hesitates. _Yes_ is on the tip of his tongue. But if he closes this door, then the Dowlings will hire a new gardener, and for some reason the thought of that smites at his heart, the thought of a stranger in that household, chasing after Warlock and drinking whiskey in the pantry -

As if she senses the direction of his thoughts, Harriet drops her voice. “I know family is important, and of course you should do what you must, but – Warlock misses you, and if I’m being perfectly candid, so does Nanny,” she says. “She hasn’t been the same, over the last few months, you know.”

“Nanny,” Aziraphale repeats. “She’s – still there?”

“Of course,” says Harriet, bewildered. “We couldn’t do without her.”

She keeps talking, but the angel doesn’t hear her. He takes the phone away from his ear and presses it to his chest, trying to make it make sense. It doesn’t, no matter which way he looks at it.

Crowley has been working at the Dowling residence since Christmas. Alone.

Crowley is trying to stop the Apocalypse, without him.

He can hear Harriet talking. He brings the receiver back to his ear. She is still nervously filling the silence, not sure whether she has overstepped.

“ - but overall I think she’s taking it rather badly,” she is saying. “It’s like she doesn’t know quite where she belongs, these days.”

“That does make sense,” Aziraphale hears himself reply. “We, ah. We had a quarrel, before the holiday.”

“I thought that might be the case,” Harriet admits. “I always wondered if – you know. The two of you.”

“It’s always been the two of us,” says Aziraphale. He is startled to discover that it is the most honest thing he has ever said to her.

“Thought so,” says Harriet, but she doesn’t sound pleased about it, only a little sad. “Sometimes those are the ones that can cut us the deepest.”

“Thank you,” Aziraphale says, “but I don’t think she’s the only one at fault,” and he is even more astonished to discover that this is a second truth.

“I think you should talk to her. Pick a place to meet and just, you know. Sort things out.”

“I think," says Aziraphale, stumbling a little bit: over his words, over the idea of it. Something that is either apprehension or longing settles in his gut like a stone. "I think that you might be right.” 

*

They meet at the British Museum, at Aziraphale's suggestion; he had wanted some public location, some external buffer, as if that could slow the decay of their orbit. The futility of this, of course, strikes him the instant Crowley comes through the door. Part of his hair is tied back, leaving the scarlet mane loose around his shoulders and throat; he’s wearing wine-red jeans and a dark, baggy jacket that somehow manages to accentuate how slender he is underneath, how impossibly narrow his hips are. The angel’s mouth is already dry with the wanting of him.

 _Not promising,_ he reflects, nervously, and he goes to stand at his side.

They don’t look at each other, but when the demon moves away and ambles into the exhibit halls, he follows. Silently, they pass by everything, the friezes, the sculptures, the delicate Ming china, including a prominent display that Aziraphale thinks might have belonged to him, long ago. He pauses, temporarily distracted by it, and Crowley waits for him, lets him look, hands jammed into his pockets. He says nothing.

Afterwards, they sit in the cafe, with two slices of angel cake that neither of them can eat. Aziraphale anxiously shreds his into crumbs with the tines of his plastic fork.

And then, abruptly, he sets it aside.

"Tell me why you’re doing this," he says. “The Dowlings, the nanny, this whole conniving plan of yours. And don't talk to me about Glyndbourne and gravlax. Tell me _why_."

Behind his sunglasses Crowley’s face is still. Then he leans forward and hisses, his teeth bared. “How can you not undersssstand,” he says, the sibilance of his consonants as silky as a freshly whetted knife. The hiss is almost enough to conceal the fact that, beneath its edge, he sounds bitter, and helpless, and lost.

“I don’t,” says Aziraphale frankly. “You have no possible motive to -”

“No motive!” says Crowley. His voice is so loud that he draws looks. "Aziraphale, for G- anyone’s sake. If Armageddon happens, it’s a coin toss as to which one of us _dies_." He spits it out, as if it's the most obvious thing in the world. “But if we can avert it, then you at least will be -”

He stops. Swallows.

"But they'll torture _you,_ " the angel says blankly. “For sabotaging your orders.”

The sunglasses angle away from him. "They won't," Crowley says fiercely, and he sounds certain of it. "They won’t.”

The memory of a thermos flashes into Aziraphale’s mind, and the meaning of the word _insurance._

He wants to believe him. So badly, he wants to believe him. But the thing that holds him back is the physical presence of Crowley himself. If the demon is being honest, then there is no possible explanation for the way the light catches his hair more than anything else in the room, or how delectable he looks, like this, one ankle hooked over the other knee, almost invitingly. The impulse is even stronger than it was: Aziraphale wants to eat him instead of the angel cake, and it’s _unfair._

“I’m not trying to _tempt_ you,” Crowley says furiously, as if he can hear Aziraphale’s thoughts.

He’s lying, the angel thinks miserably, looking away from him. He must be. He _still_ must be.

Crowley makes a noise of great frustration, and drags both hands over his face. Then he fishes the receipt for their meal out of his pocket, and clicks a ballpoint pen.

“We are not going to talk about this,” he says. “Not now, not ever again. Swear to me.”

“What?” says Aziraphale, bewildered.

“I can prove that I’m telling you the truth,” Crowley says, “but you have to swear.”

“I don’t know what you -”

“ _Ssswear to me_ ,” the demon snarls.

Aziraphale hesitates, and then gives his word. Crowley exhales.

“Sssometimes,” he says through his teeth, “you can be a right bastard, you know that?”

And then he begins to draw.

*

It only takes a second for Aziraphale to understand what is happening. Crowley is introducing himself, the old way, the way that permits no secrets between entities. It is a confession. No, it is more than that: it is a surrender.

The ink on the flimsy paper grows livid, black and yet blazing, as he writes the sigil that makes up his name. Aziraphale watches every line with an avid fascination: the harsh downward stroke that means _sinner,_ a dip to the left that means _full of doubt_ , a complex sign that means _starlight_. Here is the curlicue that means _serpentine, snake._ And here is the wing, slashed, that means _angel_ , albeit past tense, and a great bold loop that means – that means – _worship, devotion,_ or rather -

He feels all of the air leave him. Crowley clicks the pen again and throws it down, defiantly.

“Oh,” says Aziraphale blankly.

“ ‘Oh,’” Crowley mimics, and his voice is full of hatred.

Except, of course, that “hatred” is not the true name for it.

Aziraphale touches the little piece of paper. Crowley’s nostrils flare, as he watches the angel press a cautious fingertip against the sigil, but he says nothing - which is good, because Aziraphale is still working out how to cope with this. On a ragged, ripped museum receipt, a demon has not only shown his true name to yet another being that could use it against him, but also just confessed to being in love with him.

Crowley is still glaring at him. Softly, Aziraphale says, “You -”

“Nope,” says Crowley, and he stands, or unfolds rather, out of his chair, so rapidly that it squeals against the floor. “You swore. We’re not talking about it.”

Aziraphale cannot silence himself. “You drew that for _other demons_?” he whispers.

Crowley looks at his own name on the paper between them and says, as if without meaning to, “What could they do to me, that could be worse than this?”

The angel pushes his own chair back. He doesn’t know what he means to do, but Crowley backs away from him hastily, and then turns and strides from the room.

Aziraphale lets him go, thinking that at this point, it might be an act of mercy.

He looks back at the receipt. Picks up the pen. Horrible suspicion is seeping through him.

He rotates the scrap of paper and writes his own name below Crowley’s. Effortless calligraphy loops together the shapes for _guardian, angel, sword, hedonist,_ and then –

Aziraphale pauses, and then sweeps out the tip of the pen into the same loop that Crowley had drawn. It pledges _adoration and devotion;_ it tells the secret of a being’s heart when it is in another’s keeping. The bell of its arc is wide enough to pass across the shining hoop that Crowley has written, and Aziraphale looks, astonished, at the point of intersection.

His own sigil remains black. It only takes him a moment to understand why, and then, feeling sick, he sets the nub of the pen against the paper and adds a small final sroke, the mark that means he knows that he is loved in return.

It was the missing piece.

On the torn receipt, the ink becomes as brilliant as snow.

Aziraphale takes a deep breath, and pronounces his name.

The sound of it tolls through the museum. All over the cafe, heads turn, and fifty little human souls flare as hot as matches for a moment, in the breath of a wind that speaks without deceit. Wide-eyed, they look at the man-shaped being that sits among them. They listen to him proclaim that he is not a man. And they marvel.

“I love him,” Aziraphale says to them in his own tongue. It’s foolish. In a minute, he will have to make them forget, but right now the storm is moving through him, and in its eye, he cannot be silent. “I do. I do. I do.”

*

The way forward is clear. It is so clear, in fact, that despite the pain and anguish he has caused thus far, Aziraphale is giddy. All he needs to do is tell his secret, and Crowley is saved. To be loved is to have one’s name change again, as it does in the act of loving.

The problem, however, is in the telling.

Crowley doesn’t answer the doorbell. He doesn’t answer the phone. He doesn’t retrieve the note that a miracle manifests into the Bentley ( _please call,_ it says. As if he would, now). The angel even appears at the Dowling residence, suited and sans sideburns, and guiltily inquires after their nanny (“A relative of Francis,” he says, “trying to make sure that the two of them are all right,” and Harriet’s eyes go as round as saucers), there is no news.

Finally, Aziraphale, out of patience, out of options, goes back to Crowley’s flat and unlocks it himself with the pass of a hand. He lets himself in, hunts through the labyrinth of halls and rooms. It takes him longer than he would have guessed possible, but eventually he stumbles, quite literally, across Crowley, blinking up at him from the floor, where he appears to have been lying flat on his back, looking up through the leaves of his plants. He is at least a little drunk. Worse, he looks exhausted, a haggard expression that darkens even further when he realizes who it is.

“-dn’t invite you,” he groans, almost unintelligible, and covers his face.

“No, you didn’t,” says Aziraphale, sitting next to him. He hesitates, and then sets a hand over Crowley’s heart.

“Don’t,” says Crowley fiercely, shivering.

“We need to have a conversation,” Aziraphale says.

“Angel, _no_ ,” Crowley says. “You _swore._ We’re not going to talk about it.”

Aziraphale’s voice does not sound like his own.

“I can save you,” he says, “I know how to save you.”

Crowley lifts his scarlet tousled head, and looks at him, shocked, abruptly sober, and the angel leans over him, into him, and kisses him as softly as the snow that had fallen on them in December, that first time, a hush over a silent city.

He is not afraid. He knows, now, that he will not Fall for this after all. There is nothing profane about it. There is only Crowley, disbelieving, clutching at him like someone close to drowning, and Aziraphale clasping the desperate hands as tightly as he knows how.

They don’t talk about it. They don’t talk about it for the better part of an hour. Then, and only then, after they have moved to a different room, a more comfortable bed, does Aziraphale, gasping, whisper the question.

“May I say it?”

“I’d rather you didn’t,” Crowley pants into his ear. By now, his voice is also raw, his breaths also coming ragged and harsh. Their faces are inches apart, and the angel, pulling back a little, observes that the question has changed his eyes, leaving them wide and yellow and bright as a harvest moon.

So Aziraphale says his own name instead. He lays the syllables out like a vespers, the herald of a late but no less precious communion. He tells it all, the sword of justice, the guardian instincts, even the embarrassing, persistent, hungry hedonism, and when he gets to the part that means that he is also head over heels in love, the demon cries out and presses his face into the skin of Aziraphale’s throat.

He finishes quietly, with the piece that means he knows it is reciprocated, the piece that must now also finish Crowley’s name.

“Do you understand?” he says gently, touching the sweat-slick temple like a benediction. “This is the escape. They don’t know your name, Crowley. I have rewritten you.”

There is no answer, and for his own sake as well as the demon’s, the angel pretends not to notice the wet streaming heat of his damned tears.

*

Dawn comes stealing into the room, and Aziraphale is conscious of it, insofar as it changes the shadows on a sleeping demon’s face. He brushes the hair back, contemplatively, considering the months and years that will follow this moment. Soon a nanny will be expected on the grounds of the Dowling estate. Soon a gardener will have been absent for too long.

At last, he sighs, and kisses the soft lips, which curl downward in annoyance. One eye cracks open, showing a sliver of yellow light.

“ ‘S too early, angel,” the demon says, cranky. “Go back to sleep.”

Aziraphale has not slept, but that doesn’t seem relevant at the moment. He says, “You know I need to apologize to you.”

“Bollocks to that,” says Crowley, and the yellow light is extinguished.

Aziraphale chooses to ignore this. He runs a hand through Crowley’s hair again, a spill of wine over the pillow.

“I do,” he says. “I think I forgot that part, last night.” He takes a deep breath. “I’m sorry.”

“Come again?” says Crowley wickedly.

“I'm sorry,” Aziraphale repeats, refusing to let it be a jest. “For all of it. For hurting you. For thinking you would ever agree to hurt me. Forgive me.”

The demon frowns without opening his eyes. “Nothing to forgive,” he mutters at last.

“Of course there is.”

“Then fine, sure, I do.” Crowley’s eyes are still closed. When he speaks again, his voice is even softer. “But, for the record? I would die before I agreed to something like that.”

“I know,” says Aziraphale, and says it again in their own language, for good measure. _I know._

“Well,” says Crowley gruffly. “As long as you know.”

“Anyway, that’s not going to happen,” Aziraphale says, forcing jolliness.

“Oh, yes? And why is that?”

He tells the demon precisely why, in the language of angels.

_Because we are going to save the world._

This is not as profound as he wants it to be. Future tense is tricky, in their old pure tongue, and the statement does not reverberate through him the way that it would if it were already true. But saying it fills him with hope, and he can see from the flicker across Crowley’s face that in this, as in everything, now, he is not alone.

He inclines his head again, tasting Crowley’s mouth, until the other finally groans into wakefulness and drags a hand across his face, trying to hide the fact that he is moved. When he glares up from the pillow, Aziraphale is prepared for the balefulness of the expression, and is already smiling at him.

“There you are,” he says softly. “Good morning.”

“No,” Crowley protests. “No morning cheer. No snuggling in bed. This isn’t some sappy TV series that requires a touching morning-after scene. I have standards.”

“I’m sure I don’t know what you mean, Anthony J. Crowley,” says Aziraphale, kissing his brow. His fingers are still wound in that hair that is as red as sin, as red as blood, as red as a still-beating heart. Moving the strands aside, he sets his lips by the demon’s ear, and whispers, “By the way, have I ever told you how much I love your name?”

“ _Ugh,_ ” says Crowley, and he mashes his face into his pillow, very nearly quickly enough to hide his answering smile. Muffled, he says, “You are _intolerable_.”

“I was only paying you a compliment,” Aziraphale says, all wide-eyed innocence, and he doesn’t stop laughing until Crowley finds a way to make him.


End file.
